Abstract
This article seeks to explore and extend the broader coordinates of the formalist turn within International Security Studies. While the paradigmatic shift towards hybrid security is a welcome upgrade and a much-needed counterweight to what has been a deep-rooted tradition of functionalist and teleological scholarship, the study of hybrid security orders continues to leave many more issues unexplored, especially in relation to the in-between spaces that emerge in articulated structural systems.
The article shows that by examining the politics of spatial by-products of formal co-development, explored through the conceptual prisms of evolutionary biology and spherology, and the broader dynamics of urban security we may not only develop a better grasp of the self-organising and informal efforts of local actors to construct their own self-contained lifeworlds and peaceworlds, but also strike a more fruitful balance between formal and functional analysis.